International, national, and local laws require compliance with environmental policy and regulatory frameworks. At the international level, the Sphere Handbook, the Code of Conduct for The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction address the need to prevent over-exploitation, pollution, and degradation of the environment and encourage sustainable use and management of ecosystems.

This guide outlines ways in which adverse environmental impacts can be avoided after disasters, and good practices can be promoted. It covers sectors including settlements and land use planning; building construction; waste management; energy; infrastructure; water, sanitation and hygiene; agriculture and livelihoods; and education. It highlights the importance of flood risk management, landslide prevention and treatment, and management of forests after disasters.

This brief aims to help decision-makers across sectors in Myanmar incorporate climate change risks into planning and investment decisions by summarising key messages from a detailed technical analysis of climate change in Myanmar that is released alongside this report.

With the current global average temperature now at around 1°C above pre-industrial levels, poor people in developing countries are already suffering devastation from climate change impacts. It is therefore critical and urgent for vulnerable countries and communities to adapt to climate change impacts. Being prepared for changes in climate and severe weather events can reduce the impacts on people’s lives, their livelihoods and food security. For too long, however, action in cutting emissions and scaling-up adaptation has been utterly inadequate.

All financing sources – public and private; domestic and international – will need to be mobilized to meet the sustainable development challenges ahead. As the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing (ICESDF) points out, there are sufficient funds globally to achieve sustainable development but a clear political commitment to structural reforms and systemic changes as well as additional and innovative financing approaches are needed to make real progress.

As world leaders meet in New York later this month at a summit convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to discuss the global fight against climate change, a new report highlights the crucial role a new set of Sustainable Development Goals must play in meeting the challenge.
It says the goals, to be agreed next year, offer a vital opportunity for the international community to tackle the way that climate change is driving people into poverty.

By declaring its intention to restore and support conservation of one million hectares of natural forest and other ecosystems in Sumatra and Kalimantan, APP has substantially strengthened the Forest Conservation Policy it announced in February 2013.

In defiance of local protests and international opposition, UK company Soco International PLC will start on Saturday the seismic testing phase of its controversial oil exploration project in Virunga National Park, according to media reports.

Residents living near the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) park say that portions of Lake Edward will be closed to fishing while Soco searches for subterranean oil reserves. If deposits are found, WWF understands that the company intends to drill exploration wells in the lake.

Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) smashed the Philippines in November 2013, taking 6200 lives and causing almost P600 Billion in economic damage. Tacloban, the largest city in the Eastern Visayas, was virtually obliterated. With the growing unpredictability of climate change effects, who knows which city will be hit next?

A framework for establishing an international mechanism to address climate change loss and damage at the UN climate talks in Warsaw (COP19)

As global warming continues at an alarming rate, communities around the world are already suffering from unprecedented losses as a result of extreme weather and slow onset climate-related disasters. With no sign of the collective global action required to tackle the climate crisis, the sheer scale of climate impacts which cannot be adapted to is only set to get worse.

Over recent decades the concept of flood risk management has been cultivated across the globe. Implementation however remains stubbornly difficult to achieve. In part this reflects the perception that a risk management paradigm is more complex than a more traditional standard-based approach as it involves "whole systems" and "whole life" thinking; yet this is its main strength and a prerequisite for more integrated and informed decision making.

An international framework to address loss and damage from climate impacts

Almost daily reminders by the scientific community of the impending dangers posed by climate change have yet to penetrate the consciousness of our political leaders. Despite the fact that climate impacts are now unfolding much faster than previously modelled, governments are failing to act with sufficient mitigation ambition.

Flowing Rivers, Full Bellies: The case for freshwater conservation to achieve food security is the title of a publication presenting five cases in managing water ecosystems to guarantee the maintenance of the ecosystem and the food production.

Kenya's Naivasha basin involves a broad group of stakeholders including large horticulture companies and their employees, smallholder farmers, local government and basin inhabitants, and those dependent on the broader Kenyan economy and trade.

Stockholm — Hydropower dams planned for the lower mainstem of the Mekong River could decimate fish populations and with them the primary source of protein for 60 million people. The impact of the dams would extend far beyond the river, as people turn to agriculture to replace lost calories, protein and micronutrients, according to a new study by WWF and the Australian National University.